Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/136

Rh could tell her that he was hers, to send out to life or to death at her choice.

She put out her hand to him with royal grace to thank him as sovereigns thank their subjects. She let his lips linger on it mutely, then, with no more emotion than queens show at that act of homage, she sank into a couch, and bent slightly forward.

"Listen! I want no political controversy, but it seems to me unutterably strange that yon, with your bold high spirit, your passion for liberty, your grand contempt for conventionalities and station, should have no sympathy with a party whose cause is essentially that of freedom."

He looked at her wearily. What were creeds and causes to him now?

"I am no politician," he said, briefly. "I have never mingled in those matters. I am neither a student nor a statesman. I hate tyranny. I would stamp it out wherever I saw it; but the codes of my race were always conservative. I may unconsciously have imbibed them."

She smiled with ironic disdain. He had touched the qualities in her with which she could rule men like children, and could have swayed a kingdom with the sceptre of Russian Catherine or of Maria Theresa.